


Does Khan Show Mercy in “Into Darkness”? a meta on Khan’s actions

by Cerridwen



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), star trek kelvin timeline
Genre: Gen, Khan showing mercy, USS Enterprise - Freeform, USS Vengeance - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 12:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerridwen/pseuds/Cerridwen
Summary: One of the most contentious points made against Khan is that after stating “No ship should go down without her captain” he fires on the Enterprise, seemingly to destroy her. But as with all of Khan’s actions one needs to look deeper. With him it’s as much as what he doesn’t say or do as what he does.





	Does Khan Show Mercy in “Into Darkness”? a meta on Khan’s actions

One of the most contentious points made against Khan is that after stating “No ship should go down without her captain” he fires on the Enterprise, seemingly to destroy her. But as with all of Khan’s actions one needs to look deeper. With him it’s as much as what he doesn’t say or do as what he does.

If Khan was truly trying to destroy the Enterprise then he suddenly became the worst shot in the entire Federation because if we look at the Enterprise’s schematics the only areas of the ship that he actually hit were the warp core and main engineering sections.

Compare this to the damage done to the Enterprise by Admiral Marcus during the first attack by the Vengeance.

In addition, we need to consider these images here.

These are what are known as phaser drones.

The Special Issue booklet that comes with the model of the USS Vengeance gives us some diagrams and information on the weapons capacity of this ship.

Please note what it says in red here about the MarkVII Phaser Sphere Array Drones. It states “phaser spheres can detach from hull and triangulate positional target threat. Allows Vengeance to attack from multiple positions on multiple targets.”

This picture gives you an idea of the field of fire that these spheres had.

Now on page 17 of the booklet there is a summary of this weapon by Bruce Holcomb ( **emphasis mine** ).

“There were spheres on the side of the navigational dish that were always part of the concept drawings. We dreamt up this idea that they were phaser drones that could detach from the ship. You’d have the main ship and then you’d have these two balls flying around **triangulating their fire on the Enterprise from three different directions** . . . We did use them but you never knew what it was! There’s this one ball that does go flying past the Enterprise and **fires a torpedo at it**.”

We also know that Marcus said earlier “I’ll make this quick. Target the aft torpedoes on the Command Bridge.” But when Khan fires the command bridge is clearly not Khan’s target. It is not even anywhere near the areas Khan hit. Nor was the life support, the area Khan threatened to target when he was negotiating with Spock. Khan also didn’t fire on the weapon’s bays, the phaser banks, and the secondary command bridge, any of the evacuation shuttle bay areas or the crew quarters. Any damage done to those areas was done in the first attack by Marcus.

Now consider this. Khan was arguably one of the most brilliant and skillful warriors the planet Earth ever produced. He was in control of the most advanced warship in the entire Federation, a ship he himself helped design (as evidenced by his innate knowledge of it). This means that he had highly advanced knowledge of ship design, well beyond PhD level given the advances to the Vengeance. So he would have known where to target a ship in order to destroy her but also where to target her in order to cripple her. We know that he didn’t target the life support or the main command bridge because at no point did any member to crew need to don EVA suits due to life support failure and if Khan had destroyed the main command bridge, Spock and the entire Alpha bridge crew would be dead. We know that while Khan was firing on the Enterprise the Vengeance was fully functional, the Enterprise was well within firing range and the deployment of the phaser drones gave Khan a 360o field of fire on all three axis simultaneously with ability to fire a photon torpedo less than a meter away from the Enterprise’s hull.

So, it’s not a case of Khan missing his target. We know that Khan didn’t know how badly damaged the warp core was because as advanced as the Vengeance was it’s scanning capabilities weren’t good enough to penetrate the additional shielding that all Starfleet vessels have around engineering and med-bay. This is why he moved Khan to the med-bay when Marcus showed up instead of leaving him in the brig. We know that the scanning capabilities weren’t good enough to penetrate this shielding because if they were then not only would they have been able to scan the torpedoes and let Khan know that his crew had been removed and were in med-bay but they would also have told Marcus that Kirk was lying when he told him that Khan was in Engineering.

This means that Khan couldn’t have known how badly the Enterprise’s warp core was.

Put all these facts together and if Khan was seriously trying to destroy the Enterprise when he fired on her then he went about it in just about the most inefficient manner possible and I defy anyone to describe Khan as an inefficient killer.

However, if Khan’s intention was to merely cripple the Enterprise so that he and his crew could safely make their escape then both his actions and his words make sense. The Enterprise would have gone down in a very real sense, paralyzed and helpless. Just as Mr. Spock did when he told Khan “The torpedoes are yours.” both of them used the truth to tell a lie.

Nor was this the only time that Khan showed mercy to Kirk, even after Kirk betrayed him by having Scotty stun him on the bridge of the Vengeance.

After the Enterprise loses power and starts to fall we see Kirk running through his ship, leaping over corridors which is quite a display of athletics given the beating he just received at Khan’s hands. Which is odd when you remember that Khan shattered Carol Marcus’ knee with one kick, crushed Admiral Marcus’ skull with his bare hands in under 10 seconds and defeated (by my count) six to eight armed Section 31 agents on the way to the bridge while being unarmed himself. Yet he pounds on Kirk and throws him about the bridge like a rag doll while still leaving him in a good enough condition to be capable of all that? My point here is that for all the time Khan spent beating on Kirk he did him very little if any actual physical damage. Oh there would have been deep tissue bruising certainly and I have no doubt that Khan wanted Kirk to feel pain after what he had done to Khan, but there were no broken bones, no crippling injuries, in fact, judging by the way Kirk was jumping about I’d be surprised if Khan had given him so much as a concussion. For a warrior as powerful and as skillful as Khan this cannot have been accidental.

If Khan really was the homicidal maniac, the monster that others have described him he would have sent Kirk back to the Enterprise a broken, shattered, ruin of a man who couldn’t even crawl to Med Bay let alone to the Warp Core. He would have killed Carol Marcus and Scotty and sent them back with Kirk as nothing more than bloody corpses. He would have destroyed the Enterprise’s main and auxiliary command bridges so that even if Kirk could have made it to engineering there would have been nothing he could have done to save his ship because all the controls needed to stabilize her would have been destroyed along with the people needed to use those controls, Kirk’s entire Alpha bridge crew.

He did none of those things. Instead he gave to Kirk what was for a man of his physical strength and combat skills, little more than a spanking. He spared both Dr. Marcus and Mr. Scott, returning them alive to the Enterprise. He fired to cripple the Enterprise, not destroy her.

Mercy: even though Kirk was a member of the same military organization that had, by the legal definition of those terms, enslaved and tortured him and had held everyone he loved as hostages against him and even though Kirk had betrayed him after Khan had save his life twice Khan still showed Kirk mercy; or tried to at any rate.

As the poet Robert Burns said “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at http://khantoelessar.tumblr.com


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